


Four Walls

by miss_grey



Series: Conversations with Ghosts [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Empath, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Haunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 09:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6370201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_grey/pseuds/miss_grey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a ghost story.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Walls

**Author's Note:**

> I've been very interested in ghost stories lately, but largely unsatisfied by the formulaic way they are generally told, so I decided to play with the theme.

 

 

1.

 

Houses have a life of their own.  There’s no saying how they come by their presence—whether the soul is there when the house is built, starting at the foundations and expanding through every beam, and every wall, and soaking into the boards via nail and glue, or whether it’s a sentience that’s acquired, over time, when the thoughts and feelings of the people within imbue it with its own heart that beats on, long after the people have gone.  Houses hold memories, or else they relive them.  Sometimes it’s both.  Sometimes, a house can’t help what it’s become any more than we can, but each beam tells a story, and each window’s seen our souls.  Part of us stays in our homes, long after we’ve gone.  Sometimes, our homes hold onto us, long after their purpose.  Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but listen.

Sometimes we come by houses in the strangest of ways.  Sometimes we grow up in them, because that’s where our families have dug their roots in, and we stay because families tend to do so.  Our houses become us—at least, parts of us.  It happens after a time.  Sometimes we move in to them due to happenstance—we need a new place, or one finds us by accident.  Sometimes they’re given to us, or we join a new family, and adopt one.  Sometimes a house adopts us—it offers us a haven.  Sometimes, we need one.

It’s always a commitment, living somewhere.  Not just because of our jobs, or our families, but because we take on the weight of the history we sink into.  It wraps around us, and we live with _it_ as well.  There is no way to separate life from old wood, or memories from the stone of foundation.  Sometimes our life events are so REAL, so heavy, that they sink into the soil and stay there.  Sometimes we feel so deeply that it echoes, through time, so far that it takes a long while to come back to us.  But it does.  Eventually…it does.  Sometimes, though, we’ve already gone, and someone else must hear it, feel it.  It’s a joy, sometimes, and a burden as well.  It takes a special kind of person to commit to a house, and all those who have lived there.

This is a ghost story, of sorts.  But only in the way that we are all, in some way, ghosts.

 

 

 

 

2.

 

The stairs creak. 

That’s the first thing you must understand about this house.  It was the first thing I noticed that held any true meaning for me.

I need to start there.

The stairs creak.

 

 

 

 

3.

You don’t need to believe anything I say, but I’m going to say it anyway.

Because I feel the need to say it.

Most stories like this start with a tragedy, and end with one, too. 

But not mine.

I didn’t come here to get away from something, or to forget.  I guess you could say I came here to find myself, but that would be trite, and not completely true. 

I came here because I was curious, and bored, and had something to prove to myself.  I wanted to know if I could do it. Teach myself how to fix up an old house.  You know, revamp it, from the ground up and all that. 

So many people told me this was a stupid idea, but even if it is, I’ll never admit it.

The first thing you should know about me is that I recently finished my graduate studies, and I’m currently disenchanted with academia.  I feel like I learned all I could from those hallowed halls, and now it’s up to me to continue the journey on my own.  No professor can take me further than I’ve already come, and I realize that now.

I’m writing a book.  That’s the main reason I’m here.  The book’s about me fixing up this old house, and the lessons I learned while doing it.

This is the book, by the way.

The second thing you should know about me is that I don’t know anything about houses.  At least, nothing useful about repairing them, I mean.  I’ve lived in houses my whole life.  Happy homes, for the most part.  I have two healthy, happy parents who live not far from here, enjoying their retirement.  I have a younger sister who is also happy and has a family of her own. 

I know what houses mean to me.  And I could go on at length about various histories of construction, and the symbolic meaning of the home, thanks to my years of college education.  But that’s not the point now.

Because, the thing is, the stairs creak.  And when I first moved in, my first thought was “How do I fix them?”

 

 

 

 

4.

This story isn’t going to be what you want it to be.  But sometimes, that’s life.  It isn’t what I wanted it to be, either.

 

 

 

 

 

5.

 

Every night, at 10:35, I hear footsteps walking up the stairs.  They are heavy, evenly spaced, deliberate.  But they don’t shake the stairs, and they aren’t ominous.  They just are.

The first time it happened, it scared me.  I live alone.

It happened my first night here, right after I’d crawled into bed after a long day of cleaning the place.

I didn’t notice the time, that first night.  I was too startled to take note of the clock.  But it happened again the next night.  And the night after.  And every night since then.

Every night, at 10:35, I hear footsteps walking up the stairs.

They are a heavy, weary tread, probably repeated so many times that they were worn into the stairs, into the walls, into the very fabric of time, so that every single night they echo back. 

It’s not a disturbing sound, though.  It’s a comforting one.  At least, it is now.  Heavy footfalls, one after the other, all the way up each of the thirteen steps from the first floor to the second.  They happen faithfully at the exact same time every single night.  I can count on them.

That’s what I feel now, when I hear them.  Reassurance.  No matter what I have done in my day, the steps come at 10:35.  I don’t know how long this has been happening.  I don’t know if it happens when the house is empty, or only when someone is here.

I don’t know who the steps belong to.  I don’t know why this particular person was climbing the stairs.

But I stopped worrying about it, after a while.  It became predictable in a way that was safe.  I think, now, that it would worry me more if I didn’t hear them one night.

I think to myself “It’s my late-night visitor, come to let me know he’s home.”  And I don’t know if that’s accurate, if that’s where the sound originally came from.  I think to myself that maybe, before, a wife and child might have lain awake, waiting for these same sounds, and were comforted by them.  Maybe that’s what happened.  Maybe it’s not.

My mom called me the morning after that first night, to ask how it went.

I told her that the stairs creaked.  But that’s normal for old houses, isn’t it?

 

 

 

 

 

6.

 

I like to sit in the kitchen and write.

In the early hours of the morning, the sun slants in just perfectly through the bay windows, and lights up the breakfast nook so that it glows softly.  It’s calm and quiet, and peaceful.  I settle in there with my laptop, and I take my time.  I dwell over toast with apricot jam, and I brew strong coffee that makes the whole kitchen smell divine. 

I love knowing that there’s nowhere else I have to be. 

I rise early, and dress early too.  I’m not the kind of person who likes to sit around in their sleep clothes.  That doesn’t make me happy.  I like to feel productive.  I wake up with the sunrise.

 

I write there in the evenings, too, just as the sun is going down.  I like to sit and write while my dinner cooks on the stove.  It fills the kitchen with warm, delicious scents.  The scents of nourishment and comfort.

Sometimes, I hear the strains of a violin play—wispy and mournful, but beautiful anyway.

 

Sometimes I stay awake all night and write.  I like to turn all the lights on when it’s dark outside, so that the house is a beacon of light in an otherwise dark world.  I know it’s a waste of electricity—keeping all the lights on.  But I don’t care.  It makes me feel like I’m the only person left in the world, to sit up late like that and write.

I write some pretty great things in the stretch between 1:00 and 4:00 am.  Sometimes it’s because I’m exhausted, and my emotions are raw.  I don’t care what I say at that time in the morning.  Sometimes it’s because I’m just _that awake,_ fueled by coffee and the bright energy of knowing that no one is going to call me or bother me, or judge me at that hour.  No one else is awake except for me.

Well, mostly.

 

 

 

 

7.

 

There’s something therapeutic about fixing things yourself.

I’ve banged up my hands.  I’ve had cuts and bruises and earned every single one.  I’ve torn or stained some of my clothes.  I’m not sorry.

I started with the windows.  They weren’t easy to replace. 

I had to buy a ladder.  Like, a big one.  I hadn’t really considered that in order to replace the upstairs windows, I’d have to crawl up there to do it.  The ladder didn’t fit in my car, of course.  I had to strap it to the roof, and tie rags around the ends of it so that no one rammed into it on the road.  It was a scary drive, and I white knuckled the wheel until I got back to the house.  But I have a ladder now.

I figured starting on the ground floor was the best bet, and I’m glad I had the foresight for that, because it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought to remove the stops on the old windows.  I’d needed serious elbow grease to get the job done, and I can’t even imagine trying to tackle that the first time while wobbling dangerously on a ladder.  No thanks.  I mean, this whole project is sort of insane, but I’m not suicidal or anything.

The guy at the hardware store told me I’m crazy.

It took longer than I wanted, but eventually, I got it all done.  All of the windows are whole and clean, now.  And the cold drafts are gone.  Mostly.

I felt like someone was watching me while I worked.  But not like… _watching me_ in the way that might send chills chasing up my spine.  More like, watching over me, steadying the ladder, making sure that I didn’t fall.

Maybe I’m projecting.  Or imagining things.  But it feels nice, sometimes, to be watched that way.

 

 

 

 

8.

I see shadows out of the corners of my eyes.  Not all the time, but often enough. 

Sometimes, it’s a quick, darting shadow, black as night, but gone before I can get a good look at it.  Most of the time, I dismiss it and end up convincing myself that there’s nothing there.

Other times, the shadow lingers.  It dwells in doorways and windows and mirrors. 

I admit, sometimes it terrifies me.  I find myself with a pounding heart, and sweaty palms, and struggling to catch my breath.  Not because the presence is oppressive, necessarily, but because it’s _there._ And it’s not supposed to be. 

It’s not supposed to be, but it is.  It’s there.  All the time.

I don’t always see the shadow, but I can feel its presence regardless.  Sometimes it gives me the shakes.  I open all of the windows during the day to get some fresh air into the house, or I go outside and sit on the porch for a while.  At night time, I turn on all of the lights.

Sometimes, I’m too scared to go to sleep, so I lie awake in bed.  Then at 10:35, I hear the footsteps on the stairs, and it helps.  It shouldn’t, probably, but it does.  It helps.  Sometimes, after the footsteps, I find myself able to fall asleep.

The reflections in the mirror are the worst.  Not because they’re any different from the other shadows, but because they’re more jarring that way.  A darkness, usually glimpsed over my shoulder, in the same visual space as me.  When I turn around, there’s no one there.

The shadow has never done anything to me.  It’s just there.

I don’t know how I feel about it.  I can never seem to make up my mind.

 

 

 

 

9.

 

To be honest, I hated the wallpaper.  It wasn’t that it was _bad,_ necessarily.  Just ugly. 

So I decided to get rid of it.

Violin music wafted thinly through the air as I tore the paper from the walls in strips.  It was sort of nice.  Therapeutic, like I said. 

I started in the upstairs bedrooms.  I tore the wallpaper down, patched and primed the walls, then painted them. 

Mostly I used soft, soothing colors.   Blues and greens.  I hate white walls.  They alternately make me nervous and bore me. 

It took me a couple weeks to do it.  Mostly because I was working alone, but also because I had to learn how to properly do it.  Thankfully, the internet can teach you anything.

When I moved into the house, I chose the corner room at the top of the stairs.  It wasn’t the largest room, but it got really good natural light, and I liked the feel of it.

When I peeled the gaudy, flowered wall-paper away from the walls, I found something underneath that gave me pause.

Carved into the wall across from where I’d placed my bed, in jagged, slanting letters was the message: _Finn was here._

I peeled the paper away from it tenderly, and ran my fingers across the gouges.  _Finn was here._ It was a message taken out of time, eternal.  _When_ was Finn here?  And _who_ was Finn?  Did it even matter, really?

I sat on the floor in front of the words and thought about them for a while.

Okay, so I lied. 

The reason it took me so long to finish painting the house was because I couldn’t decide on what to do with the message.  I spent days thinking about it.  I went back to it several times a day, and at night when I lay in bed, I contemplated the markings.  At 10:34, I couldn’t decide what to do.  At 10:35, I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs, and I let out a tense breath.  At 10:36, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I did it all over again.

In the end, I decided not to paint over it.  I painted all around it, but left that part of the wall bare.  I bought a cheap picture frame from the hardware store, painted it black, and nailed it in place over the carving, so that it was framed nicely. 

Why? 

Because _Finn was here._

I didn’t know when, and I didn’t care.

A message like that, it meant something.

 _I_ was here, after all, and I thought to myself that later, I’d want someone to acknowledge that, too.

 

 

 

 

 

10.

 

I love the smell of fresh-baked cookies.  It makes me feel warm and happy and loved. 

The kitchen smells like that all the time, now, ever since I repainted the walls in a buttercup yellow and refinished the hardwood floors.  Fresh-baked cookies and good, strong, coffee.

The thing is, though, I can’t bake worth shit.

 

 

 

 

 

11.

 

Violin music is one of the most soothing sounds I’ve ever heard in my life.  I’ve always loved it.  I spent hours and hours listening to Tchaikovsky when I was a teenager. 

I don’t recognize any of these songs, but they’re all beautiful. 

Sometimes the tune is springy and full of joy.  Quick and strong.   _Present_ in the house. 

I used to think that one of the neighbors played, or that it was my imagination.  Now I know neither of those things is true.

Sometimes the music is the most melancholy sound I’ve ever heard in my life.  But it’s not all sadness.  The notes are filled with a soft joy, like their creation is cathartic and freeing.

My eyes tear up on the melancholy nights.  But it’s not a bad thing.

 

 

 

 

12.

 

_“I miss you.”_

The voice was soft and deep, and the words choked me with tears.

I thought I was dreaming. 

I sat up in bed and found the young man slumped at the foot of my bed, with his head bowed into his hands.  His profile was illuminated by the faint glow of moonlight and I could see his shoulders shake with repressed sobs.

I reached for him, but stopped short of touching him.  I didn’t know him, but for a moment, I felt like I did.  My fingers trembled where they hovered in the air above his shoulder.

I sucked in a breath.

The young man raised his head and turned to look at me in the darkness.  His shadowed eyes glittered with unshed tears.  _“Oh,”_ he whispered, _“I’m sorry.”_

Then he dissolved into the darkness of the room.  I turned to look at the clock on my bedside table.  3:30 am.

I climbed out of bed and made my way downstairs, turning all the lights on as I went. 

I poured myself a glass of water, but struggled to drink it down.  My heart was racing, and I couldn’t get a full breath.

I felt the crush of anxiety, heavy in my chest, and the jitters of adrenaline still pumping through my veins. 

I felt the sorrow and impenetrable grief of someone else’s loss.  But it was in me now, trapped, begging for release.

I went out onto the dark porch, insulated from my neighbors by rows of fences and hedges and sleep.

I cried.

 

 

 

 

 

13.

 

I was _upset_ for the rest of the day, dwelling on the dream from the night before.  Well… _dream._ I began to wonder if it hadn’t actually been real.  I’m still not sure, but in the end, it doesn’t matter.

Whether it was real or not, I _felt_ the same way about it.  The young man’s voice had trembled when he’d spoken, and his eyes had looked so devastated when he’d gazed at me through the darkness.

I didn’t know who he’d been talking to, but the mournful sentiment settled into my own heart, and I _felt_ it, and I found myself missing this person, too.  Missing them, and unable to shake that feeling.

I wished that I could reach across time and hold the mysterious young man.  I wanted to tell him that I understand what loss is, and reassure him that he isn’t alone. 

Even now, he isn’t alone. 

I feel for him.  I feel _with_ him.

 

 

 

 

14.

 

Don’t think that I didn’t do my research after that.  I did.  I don’t want to talk about it.

 

 

 

 

 

15.

 

I often wake in the middle of the night for no reason. 

When I was a teenager, I had terrible insomnia.  I’d wake hours before my alarm, and find myself unable to go back to sleep.  So I’d work, or read, or write.  I’d watch bad tv.  I’d find a way to keep myself occupied until the rest of the world woke up.

It’s not uncommon now for me to glimpse a shadow in my room when my eyes pop open.  There’s a moment between sleep and wakefulness when I can _see_ what’s there and simply accept it.  I have no fear in that in-between place.  In that single moment, I know the shadow, and it’s okay. 

I don’t feel that twist of nerves in my belly until after I’ve settled myself in the brightly lit kitchen and really think about it.

 

 

 

 

 

16.

 

When I bought the place, the stairs creaked.  The paint was peeling, the wallpaper sucked.  All of the floors needed to be refinished.  The faucets dripped, and the roof leaked.  The windows needed to be replaced, or resealed.  The whole damn house was drafty. 

Now only half of those things are true.

Most gothic novels want to tell you about how old houses have a language all their own, made up of creaks and groans, and the way the wood seems to breathe.

They have personality.

Nothing is ever quite right, or else it’s perfect in its eccentricity.  Houses have their own smells and sounds, and temperatures.

Those novels like to talk about dark and stormy nights.  The awareness of houses.  That nothing is ever quite what it seems.

There’s a lot of truth in those things.

 

 

 

 

 

17.

Sometimes I wake to the double echo of gun shots ringing in my ears—the sound is jolting and heavy, and feels like it is bleeding out of the walls.  It’s a terrible thing, and I almost don’t want to know, but I _do_ know, because I can feel the pain and horror and grief that comes right after the sound.  It smothers me, seeps into my blood and settles in my bones.  It wraps around me until I find myself shaking in my own bed, covered in cold sweat.  It makes me nauseous.

The first time I flew out of bed and just barely made it to the bathroom before I puked my guts up.

Then I cried.

I went downstairs and I made myself a pot of coffee and I sat in front of the kitchen window until the sun came up. 

Then I went about my day.

 

 

 

 

18.

 

My family calls, sometimes, to see how I am doing, and how the renovation is coming. 

I tell them that everything is fine.  I’m fine.  The house is fine.

Not because they wouldn’t believe me, but because they would.

These sorts of things happen sometimes.

 

 

 

 

19.

 

One of my neighbors stopped by to tell me that I play the violin beautifully.  I smiled, but didn’t know what to say.

 

 

 

 

20.

 

There was a file on my laptop that contained all of the answers to my questions.  It was a different kind of story than this.  I kept it, for a couple months.  And then I deleted it.

I sleep a little bit better now.

 

 

 

 

21.

 

Sometimes I find myself wondering how many of them there are.  It feels like there are layers of people living in this house, the years like chapters in a book, where mine is just closer to the end.  We are stacked on top of each other, our lives written into the walls like a palimpsest.  We are each real in our own time, in our own lives.  Sometimes I almost feel like they might be even more real than me, because they reverberate still.

Sometimes I think that there are an infinite number of people crowded into these four walls.  There are the ones that walk, and talk, and cry.  There are the shadows.  There are the music makers and the bakers.  There are so many of them, and they are everywhere.

Sometimes, though, I find myself wondering if it’s all the same person.  Is it possible that the same person who is responsible for the beautiful violin music also hovers like a shadow and watches me throughout the day?  Is it possible that the 10:35 footsteps, the ones that bring me a sense of peace, are somehow connected to the horrifying gunshots that sometimes happen in the middle of the night?

Maybe none of these things are connected.  But maybe they all are?  Maybe each impression was made by a different person who came before me, and who felt something so deeply that it stayed behind after they were gone.  Or maybe one person who lived here was a little bit different.  Maybe that person felt things just as deeply as I do, and the intensity of their feelings pressed those impressions into the wood and tile and drywall. 

Maybe I don’t need to be afraid of shadows.  Maybe the shadows are just the other side of fresh-baked cookies and sad, sad songs.  Maybe the choking fear of midnight gunshots is the price that needs to be paid for the soothing surety of steady footsteps.  Maybe our guardians and demons are one and the same.  Maybe they’re just people, like us.

Maybe they’re not even aware of us.  Maybe they don’t even care.  I don’t know.

But I think the answer has been there the whole time, waiting for me.

_Finn was here._

 

 

 

 

22.

The house knows me.  But my name is always said so softly, in a voice I’ve come to recognize.  I don’t worry.

 

 

 

 

23.

I know you’ve been waiting for the story.  The big reveal.  How do all of these details fit together into a tight, cohesive narrative?  When do we learn who the shadows really are? 

It’s a tough break, to be honest.  To make peace with the fact that you may never know.  That there might not _be_ anything to know.  Maybe these things that we see and hear and feel are the only things we _need_ to know.

We are taught all our lives that stories have beginnings, middles, and ends.  And that for a story to be good, we have to be able to trace the path of the characters through the narrative in that order, and that in the end, every thread will be tied up and the whole thing will suddenly make sense.

It’s easy, really.  It’s also not very realistic.

In reality, things are never quite so tidy.  And sometimes we just don’t know.  We don’t see everything.  We don’t know what’s important and what’s not, at least, not at the time.  How do we know which details to leave in and which to leave out?

It would be so much easier to tell you about the crimes, the tragedies, the epic joys experienced by the people who lived here.  But it wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be true.  At least, not all of the truth.

We are more than just moments in our own lives.  We are more than heart-wrenching grief or pain, or elation.  We are so much more than that. 

We are the countless quiet moments that come between, the moments that story tellers always leave out.  It’s not exciting, or shocking, or euphoric.  But it _is_ true.  And it _is_ real.  And those moments make us who we are just as much as the big moments do. 

No one ever thinks they’re important.  I think they mean everything.

So I’m not going to give you the answers you want.  I’m not going to tell you that what’s left of a person after they’re gone defines them.  I’m not going to take his life and boil it down to a single terrible moment and tell you that’s who he was.  I’m not.

I’m going to leave you with what I have, which are moments.  Moments of time in between, part of my daily life, where I glimpse someone else’s, and take notice.  Because those moments are important too.  Always will be.  You don’t need to know the sordid details of someone’s death to understand them.  These moments tell you more clearly than any other who they were and what life meant for them.

Parts of him are still here, just like I am.

None of us are ever alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love, and I'd be grateful to hear what you thought.


End file.
